Don’t Just Ask ‘Why?” It’s All About the “How”—Digital Industrial Transformation for Your Chemical Company

Just like the many industrial companies we serve, GE is in the middle of a strategic shift that requires new skills, capabilities, organizations, and business models. Digital industrial manufacturing has been, and continues to be, a central focus to secure a sustainable strategic advantage as a manufacturer. That’s why at GE we’ve made strategic investments to support this strategy over the past decade. While there has been a lot written about ‘why’ digital industrial transformation is essential—the bigger question is ‘how’.

How to drive change within your organization

Since 2018, the ‘how’ has been the central discussion at every customer interaction. The ‘how’ is what separates the top quartile performers and positions original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to reduce costs, squeeze more throughput out of current operations, reduce risks (health, safety, environmental), address ever rising customer expectations (new tailored products in less time), and explore new business models (think ‘product-as-a-service’).

Based on our interactions with more than 80 chemical companies (and our own learnings), we’ve realized that the ‘how’ starts with clarity about where you are starting from, the drivers behind the need for change, and what capabilities are required to reach maturity within time and budget constraints. These conversations have helped me identify three factors that answer the ‘how’:

1.      Establish an IIoT foundation and build the fundamentals
2.      Complement and consolidate to right size for the future
3.      Target value-based use cases with capability ‘Lego blocks’

1. Establish an IIoT foundation and build the fundamentals

Drivers:

• Need to build fundamental digital capabilities. Companies tend to underestimate their digital maturity because they often lack perspective of how they stack up against their competitors.

• Desire to simplify technology stack and deepen partnerships with a select number of vendors that integrate and compliment across strategic functions (ERP, Automation, MES, APM, CRM solutions).

• Disruptive pressures that cannot be met under existing operating conditions (capacity constraints, margin pressure, new competition, shareholder pressure, customer expectations outpace abilities to deliver, business model disruptions).

Needs:

• Ability to ‘leap frog’ onto an industrial strength technology stack, with limited technical debt

• Integrated end-to-end solution portfolio with UI/UX made for operator adoption

• Hybrid deployment options with edge-to-cloud capabilities (clear path to cloud deployment when/if it supports the strategy objectives)

2. Complement and consolidate to right size for the future

Drivers:

• Unable to invest in ‘secret sauce’ capabilities that differentiate the business due to ever growing costs dedicated to sustaining and maintaining outdated legacy/home-grown solutions

• Hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of point solutions that must be managed across just as many vendors (management costs alone in time and money are an enormous strain)

• Cost and complexity of current technology stack is simply unsustainable and only getting worse

• What worked in the past does not work today. Business needs have changed and technology has been enhanced/patched to meet needs. Is it time for a fresh look?

Needs:

• Reduce total cost of ownership, while improving the solutions and delivering more value to the business units, field operators, inspectors, and engineers

• Productized solutions that can satisfy 75% or more of business needs ‘out of the box’

• Leverage industry standards (e.g. IS-95) to avoid high switching cost scenarios in the future

• Complement existing technology stack - minimize loss from previous investments without compromising future speed and scale (it’s not always this solution vs. that solution, sometimes it’s better as a this AND  that solution, tightly integrated)

3. Target value-based use cases with capability 'Lego blocks'

Drivers:

• Strong foundation in place but not getting the return on investment

• Looking to move from point solution purgatory to speed and scale for enterprise value

• Clear use case that needs to be solved in the short-term (e.g. reactive) with clear walk to desired future state (e.g. predictive) as the need evolves

• Ability to distinguish between this is a cool problem to solve vs. is solving this problem directly co-related to a significant business outcome

• Budgeted to buy a point-solution and need the ability to expand to an enterprise-wide solution

Needs:

• Flexible and modular options (both in terms of software and services) that match your local need and digital maturity

• Ability to start small with clearing buying paths to scale (pricing transparency)

• Digital industrial expertise/domain knowledge/guidance to design walk from use case to solution to maturity, at scale and speed

Partner to accelerate your digital industrial transformation journey

One success factor is not necessarily better than the other, there are pros and cons to each. We would love to hear your experiences and help answer your questions to identify which path best prepares you for the digital industrial evolution. It is essential to work with an organization that has undergone a similar journey, which can provide real-life expertise complemented with an end-to-end solution stack. 

Let us help you understand the ‘how’ and there is no better time to begin than now.